Focus Live: Health minister David Clark outlines plan to get Kiwis off quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan back to New Zealand. Video / Mark Mitchell
A British man has died in Japan after contracting coronavirus on the Diamond Princess ship, making him the first UK citizen to die of the disease.
Japan's health ministry confirmed the man's death, the sixth person to die from COVID-19 after contracting it on board the cruise ship.
The deaths come as about 180 Australian and six New Zealand passengers were evacuated from Tokyo last week.
Two other Kiwis and 10 Australians tested positive for coronavirus in mandatory screening before boarding the flight and were told they had to stay behind.
A 79-year-old Australian woman later tested positive after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.
More than 3700 people were on board the Diamond Princess, which was sent into lockdown after it emerged a passenger that left the ship in Hong Kong had later tested positive for coronavirus.
Passengers speak on balconies of the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship. Photo / AP
More than 621 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed on the ship, with speculation the quarantine of passengers may have contributed to the spread of the illness.
On Monday it was revealed 23 passengers had disembarked from Diamond Princess despite not being properly cleared.
The passengers had been released after the two week quarantine period and had tested negative for coronavirus, however, had not undergone a second test for clearance, Japanese officials said.
The incident is just the latest in a series of mistakes made in the quarantining of the Diamond Princess, according to top scientists who say the cruise liner became an "incubator" for the disease.
While passengers were kept sequestered in their rooms, crew delivered water, food and medicine and were not subjected to the same strict quarantine controls.
Crew continued to share common living areas, despite some of them testing positive for coronavirus.
Australian and Kiwi passengers from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship board a Qantas plane at Haneda airport in Tokyo. Photo / AP
Japanese government health adviser Dr Norio Ohmagari said measures put in place to stop coronavirus spreading on board may have in fact aided the spread.
"We suspected some of the staff may have been infected, but they had to operate the ship itself, they had to see the passengers, they had to deliver the meals," he said, according to The Sun.
"So that may have caused some close contact with the cruise ship workers and also the passengers.
"I'm very sorry for what happened here, because there was a limitation in terms of facility, in terms of the structure of the cruise ship.
"Unfortunately to maintain daily life of the more than 3700 passengers, we needed help, we needed support from cruise members to maintain the daily life."
The decision to quarantine passengers in such close quarters has been slammed by health experts.
Global health expert Dr Roojin Habibi said shutting all the passengers in together had created a "boiling pot of transmission".
The Diamond Princess has just finished two weeks locked down in quarantine off the Japanese port of Yokohama, near Tokyo. Photo / AP
Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the New York University School of Medicine, said: "Boats are notorious places for being incubators for viruses.
"It's only morally justified to keep people on the boat if there are no other options."
Yesterday, the first case of the coronavirus has been confirmed in New Zealand.
